Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

letgrow.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 531 posts

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#391

Post by geomark »

gsk22 wrote: post #340
geomark wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even in the YouTube algorithm. I've had a couple of videos taken down due to "potential child endangerment". They were videos of me and my kid doing things that are, realistically, safer than riding a bicycle. It's pathetic how fragile kids are being made these days.

Out of curiosity, what were the videos? The algorithm (advertisers?) is certainly picky...

The most recent was when my kid did a review of two different multitools. Within five minutes of uploading it YouTube had taken it down due to "potential child endangerment."

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#392

Post by oaiey »

lmz wrote: post #321
Barrin92 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of? I've been at an Israeli wedding once and we literally had to shelter for fifteen minutes because some Gaza rocket was flying over the venue, people just shrugged it off. There's people in the thread here saying American roads in suburbs are too unsafe, I don't think these folks have seen traffic in Jakarta, and yet kids still walk to school there. Most people on earth would kill for American suburb levels of…

> I don't think these folks have seen traffic in Jakarta, and yet kids still walk to school there. You can't compare the two. Traffic in Jakarta is often barely moving while the suburbs have the opposite problem.

Maybe. But we all agree that American suburbs are peaceful, heaven-like places compared to many places in the world. In Australia it is poisoness animals, in many countries it is the availability of drugs, in some crime, kidnapping and rapist. And God forbid you live in a war zone.

Most parents would love their kids growing up in a safe place like in the US, the EU or Japan. But they are not and are faster independent and aware of their environment. And that is okay. Was like that for thousands of years.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#393

Post by mtrower »

SwetDrems wrote: post #94

A big perpetrator of this is the designed environment surrounding car culture. I moved somewhere where there's plenty of foot traffic, specifically so my kid will walk/bike to school and that is seen as completely normal. Most Americans do not understand how horrible car dependence is for personal independence, yet defend it to the end for some reason. It's really a shame.

Could you expound upon this? Specifically, why cars are bad for personal independence, but bicycles are just fine?

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#394

Post by yunwal »

ecshafer wrote: post #296
danjoredd wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also depends on where you live. If you are a suburban or rural kid, playing outside all you want is fine. Let them explore the neighborhood. If you live near a highway though, or a high crime area, then you might want to reconsider what you want to allow. You still need common sense. My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS…

There is irony here in that a "high crime" urban area is much more likely to have kids walking around with relative freedom than a "low crime" suburban area.

“High crime” urban areas are still generally safer for kids than car-centric suburban areas because cars aren’t going as fast. Kids are far more likely to die getting hit by a car than from violent crime.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#395

Post by jrumbut »

danjoredd wrote: post #140
andrepd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, a reasonable risk is tolerable. But, for instance, car-centric infrastructure has *intensely* exacerbated those risks: space is completely surrendered to cars, sidewalks are non-existent, crosswalks go across 8 lanes of 60+mph traffic. All of this, plus terrible public transport, makes it impossible to travel anyway except by car. This leads to lack of independence for children, and sedentarism.

It also depends on where you live. If you are a suburban or rural kid, playing outside all you want is fine. Let them explore the neighborhood. If you live near a highway though, or a high crime area, then you might want to reconsider what you want to allow. You still need common sense. My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS…

> My main worry is people who live in relatively safe areas, like a suburban neighborhood, but with neighbors that will STILL call CPS on you for allowing them a little freedom.

I think this is the real problem, a lack of a low stakes mechanism for resolving small issues surrounding children. No matter if these laws pass, society will have standards and sometimes (oftentimes) good people will fall short of them.

Someone who can deal with a kid who gets a little overzealous at hide and seek or who decides to poke around an abandoned building instead of walking straight home from the store. Police and CPS type organizations seem to be too heavy handed for assisting with normal families that have had a dysfunctional moment, at the same time it feels like there is a need some something (neighbors just talking to each other would be nice, but it's apparently too big an ask).

It's similar to the situation with mental health and substance use disorders. A lot of people need help, and it ends up falling to first responders of various kinds and while they want to help they aren't necessarily well equipped to do so.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#396

Post by rocket_surgeron »

If you believe a handful of cases of overzealous cops/social workers questioning the decisions of parents occuring sporadically over decades spread wide and far across the land in a country of 332,000,000 is indicative of a widespread problem, you have fallen for the social media outrage-generation agitprop trick.

Golf clap.

Articles about this rehash the same three cases endlessly and wikipedia articles about media and organizations related to childhood independence are so devoid of citations and examples that if they were about any other subject they would be deleted.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#397

Post by CalRobert »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #146
CalRobert wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your circumstances you may be able to emigrate to the Netherlands.

Western Europe in general. It's not just an NL thing.

True, but if they're from the US there's the Dutch American Friendship Treaty.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#398

Post by ithkuil »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

Italy is not as ridiculous, but until 14 years kids cannot exit school without a register adult picking them up.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#399

Post by hosh »

em-bee wrote: post #19
hosh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Let Grow organization that wrote this article and help advance legislation protecting parents, advocates for a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, independently-thinking adults. This is more than just protecting parents or preventing unnecessary breakup of families. From that lens, the question I have is, how does this kind of parenting style help poor families?

poor families have less resources/time to provide for continuous supervision for their children. so they use this parenting style by default. what helps them is that this style gets legal protection, so they are not targeted for letting their kids run unsupervised.

This parenting style isn’t exactly the same as unsupervised parenting. It is still very mindful, and can still require a lot of thought and effort on the part of the parent, something that poorer families might not have the time, energy, or resources to execute on.

How is this differentiated from neglect due to just simply being too exhausted to parent?

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#400

Post by Connor_Creegan »

genrilz wrote: post #341
Connor_Creegan wrote: post #69

This is neat and all, but the problem is very much downstream of the children-out-of-wedlock problem, which is downstream of so-called "sexual liberation" (a misuse of both the term "sexual" and the term "liberation"), which is downstream of an inconsistent sexual education, which is downstream of an inconsistent ethics of sex, which is downstream of the Fall (save for a few unmentioned steps).

I don't see what you are talking about here? The article is discussing passing laws to prevent CPS from charging people with child abuse for not helicopter parenting their children. As other people have mentioned, children aren't in much danger and so this increases their independence. I assume by children-out-of-wedlock problem you mean that there are more single parents now? (I have not checked if this is true) I d…

When you disintegrate the family unit, you stimulate the demand for outside intervention, especially in the form of state-backed "services". Like anything, because no one watches the watchers (except other watchers appointed appoint to watch the watchers that are not themselves watched), there is plenty of room for abuse of power. CPS has been out of control for decades now, and it largely has to do with the fact that in many states the first resort is removing the child from their parents.

I'm not necessarily poopoo-ing the laws they're trying to pass, I'm just saying that these laws don't really address the bigger issue of the why these services were brought into being in the first place (widespread child abandonment and neglect in mostly industrialized areas), and they do not address the question of whether or not the genesis of these services has anything to do with why they behave the way they do.

Post reply on HN